Other than color, the white bird looked the same as the finches. It only hung around for about 15 minutes and has not been seen since. My guess is that it is either an albino or leucistic house finch.

Among birds with white heads, the Ross’s gull lives in Antarctica and very rarely visits North America. In breeding season, these birds have white feathers that are dusted with light gray.

White-winged crossbills have smaller bills and weaker jaw muscles than red crossbills and hence specialize on smaller cones. Black spruce are the favored cones with hemlocks providing a second choice.

A READER sent me a photo of a white crow and asked how it could get like that, so this week I will explain how an excess or a lack of the pigment melanin can result in black and white birds.

The purple finch also has solid white undertail coverts, its rear-end feathers, while the house finch has dark streaking on its undertail coverts.